Is Healthy Eating Too Expensive? How Low-Income Parents Evaluate the Cost and Value of Food

• In Event: 228 - Section on Sociology of Culture Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 07. Culture and Inequality

Abstract

Socioeconomic disparities in diet quality and diet-related disease have attracted considerable attention from researchers, governments, and the public. Scholarly and popular discussions about why poor people tend to have nutritionally poor diets often do not consider how low-income consumers themselves evaluate the cost and value of food. Drawing on interviews with 47 low- income primary caregivers and grocery-shopping observations with a subset of 33 interviewees, I examine how low-income people assess food’s affordability—what is cheap, what is doable, what is expensive, and why. I find that respondents make two broad types of food-cost evaluations: evaluations of maximization, wherein they assess how much of the month a food will cover their nutritional needs, and comparative evaluations, wherein they evaluate the cost and value of food in relation to other options. I discuss how these subjective criteria of evaluation correspond to and diverge from standardized, objective metrics used in food- and diet- cost analyses, with implications for understanding food choice in low-income households. These findings also show how an inductive qualitative approach enhances studies of judgment and evaluation in behavioral economics. I close by considering how these findings may improve nutrition education programming for low-income people.

Author

• Caitlin Daniel, University of California, Berkeley